Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Healing Chimaeron: Part 2

So after a lot of really good discussion on this topic and another kill of Chimaeron, I felt it a good idea to follow up on Monday's post with more consideration of healing this particular boss fight.

What I find most fascinating is the different ways druids have found to handle the situation:
  • a) Lifebloom on tanks per normal, and spot-healing with regrowth/nourish and rejuv+swiftmend for the Low Health debuff.
  • b) Lifebloom on tanks per normal, and spot-healing with HT.
  • c) Rolling 3-4 lifeblooms in a group with a nourish rotation.
Each method has its merits, though I find I prefer method C for its lighter mana cost.


2 Holy Priests + Druid?
I have now done the fight with a priest/pally/druid team and with a 2priest/1druid team. I found the paladins best for tank healing of the three classes: with two priests, we decided to see if I (druid) could focus on the tanks while rolling a 3rd LB on myself, but there were unfortunate occasions when a double-strike came too soon after a massacre and I couldn't get the tank's health high enough. My suggestion for mitigating that comes down to that tank's communication: if they know it's coming soon and don't think they'll survive, calling out for cooldowns (NS+HT, or other healers' help) could aid in preventing the necessity of a battle res. It's hard to call, though. We had this tank-gib happen twice out of 7 attempts; one of those times was on our successful kill attempt, where a battle-res brought the tank back up in time to get back in there and continue. So, it is manageable, but unpleasant compared to a more dedicated tank healer. The priest in the tank-party was helping where she could, but she also needed to prioritize clearing the low-health warnings from those not covered by the lifeblooms.

Alternatively, the druid could focus purely on tank healing, and the priest in that party will cover the rest. Tossing out the third stack of lifebloom gives the druid more time to cast bigger heals on the MT without needing to restart their refresh cycle of nourish casts. Might try that out next week, if we have the same healer composition!


2 Druids + Priest?
Jen of Stories of WoW asked me (and anyone else willing to ponder on it) for suggestions on how to heal this fight with two druids + priest. I haven't raided with a second resto druid yet this expansion, as our moonkin is now dual-specced as a tank, but I think having one of those two druids using the lifebloom healing rotation (3-4 lifeblooms rolling) and the other focused purely on tank healing could make this work. The priest would probably need to cover PoH on both groups during the fued/massacre to help the druids out, though.

I would probably set it up like this:
  • Druid 1: LB both tanks (2 targets), alternating with other tank-specific heals. Purely a tank-healer.
  • Druid 2: LB on both resto druids and their 5th party member (3 targets), using the 3-stack healing rotation I posted earlier this week. Use the 4th block of the cycle to throw regrowth/4th LB/swiftmend to tanks: swiftmend should be easy if the first druid is keeping up rejuv/regrowth on the tanks.
  • Priest handling the other party on their own, and aiding the tank party as necessary during fued.


Thoughts? Discuss :)

14 comments:

Adgamorix said...

We two heal this fight - Holy Paladin and Resto Druid. We do run with an ele shaman and a spriest though, so by splitting them up we get some good raid healing ticks. I generally keep BoL on the OT (for the double hits) and just spam HL on the raid - no clue what our druid does. I mix Holy Shock and WoG for the instant heals, and mixed with the totems/spriest that's enough. I hit P3 with about 75% mana - and it's pretty manageable.

Siobhann said...

Nourish rotation to keep lifeblooms up got nerfed on PTR. Now only one stack stays up once you're out of tree. Any new advice, please? We're just starting to raid and your strats are always helpful!

Anonymous said...

You should be aware of the latest patch notes for druids specifically: "Empowered Touch now also affects Regrowth. In addition, after Tree of Life is no longer active, this talent will only refresh the most recently cast or refreshed Lifebloom, and will not refresh other copies of Lifebloom."

Having not yet raided I haven't tried keeping multiple lifeblooms up. I'm thinking this sounds like rolling multiple lifeblooms will no longer be feasible

Kae said...

Yeeeeaah so it seems. Evil patch notes and their meanie-headedness, killing our multi-blooms :( That's going to change a lot of things, and possibly make healing more boring when I don't have to run around trying to nourish two tanks constantly before their stacks fall off.

My hope is that the rejuv cost reduction and the boost to regrowth will help offset the loss of this tactic.

Vixsin said...

Actually, we switch our paladins off tank healing for this particular fight after having found that their single-target heals are fast and easy enough to bring players back above the 10k "Low Health" threshold. Since beyond that point, there's no reason to keep heals rolling on any target other than the tank, we switch our resto druid(s) to tank healing directly, capitalizing on their Mastery bonus as well as the low cost of a LBx3 + Nourish rotation. (Remember, the double attack tank doesn't need to be topped quickly other than after a non-feud massacre).

So, for a 2 druid + priest setup I'd suggest: 1 druid full time on the double-attack tank, 1 druid on the MT + g1 (tanks and melee), and the priest on g2 (ranged and heals). During Massacre, the two group healers are responsible for picking up their respective groups while the double-attack tank healer works solo to top the taunting tank. Divide the Tranquilities between separate Feuds and use a barrier on the third.

Jen said...

It looks like asking this jinxed it :/ The other druid just told us that he's quitting WoW... so it's druid/priest/priest or druid/priest/paladin for us, or nothing!
(But I hope the advice was useful for someone whose druid didn't leave :P)

Jen said...

That being said, I'm looking forward for more about 2 priests + 1 druid. Especially with the "nerf" to LB...

Anonymous said...

With the upcoming buff to Glyph of Regrowth it may be feasible to regrowth your target the first time he is hit, and then nourish him for subsequent hits, as the regrowth hot will persist at least until the next feud-stack event.

With this and the buff to WG (cooldown lowered, throughput buffed) resto druids are looking reasonably well-positioned for this fight. Not as good as a shaman, mind you, but not bad.

Adric said...

i was wondering if anyone has run into the combo of druid, pally and shamen healing this fight we spend a whole night wiping on it and but did get close several times. wipes at 5% and 1% suck before our pally ninja logged on us

Unknown said...

We have this exactly set up, shammy,dudu and H priest, we having trouble on diff targeting healing begin with,but after while we think having me dudu who doesn't have fast direct healing on 1% hp target seem a waste healing,so end up am healing 2x tanks only,keeping the MT having LB+ rej stack up and regrowth the OT make sure he have 10k all the time, it work well i would say but the only problem was i went oom at around phase3,am actually looking some more improvement for this fight also i see Kae's log he have very little rej usage, i wondering should I drop rej on MT to try to buff the mastery hots instead just 3XLB only and 2LB on OT? cos atm is hard for me to rolling 4x LB refreshing 2 tanks with rej in between and not dropping off seem. any idea if you are only healing 2 tanks on phase1 and saving more mana?

Philippe said...

@Adgamorix
I am the holy pally for this fight with Kae. Why do you put your BoL on the double strike tank? The Main Tank only needs 10k+ health while the double strike tank needs to be topped off (or near to it) and BoL only passes 50% of the heal from your direct heals so from my POV that doesn't seem like the most efficient use of BoL. Just wondering what your thought process was for your BoL selection.

Sakaki said...

Thanks for the helpful information! I've been reading more than ever about druid healing since cata came out. Been trying to see if there's something I'm not getting since I seem to have different views than what I've been reading, or told by my guild's new druid healer ~.~ But you totally have similar views as me, I think, makes me a lot more confident. So thanks :D

Also, we just got to this boss last night, and although they are gonna change lifebloom, prolly by next week when we raid again. I think I've learned a lot about this fight in particular, so thanks again.

Also, I'm totally gonna be reading your blog now, it's amazing!

Beranabus said...

@drau

He said he heals the raid not that MT, the druid must take care of the MT while he Holy Light spams the raid with Beacon on the OT.

Fîrewood said...

I was so intrigued by your post that I decided I needed to make a comment. Just to give a little background, my guild is currently 3/12 heroic with the 3 heroic bosses including Halfus, Chimaeron and Maloriak. So I've gotten a decent bit of exposure to Chimaeron, both normal and heroic. Our healing team options consist of 2 priests (one holy/disc, one disc) and 2 druids. That's it; we have no resto shaman, we have no holy paladin. We have killed Chimaeron both with a combination of 2 priests, 1 druid and with 2 druids, 1 priest - that's normal and heroic. We've done it both ways.

2 Druid + 1 Disc Priest: Disc priest on tanks full time, druids HoT'ing the tank that isn't taking the double attacks to keep him >10k hp at all times. Druids use healing touch x1 to keep raid members that get the poison above 10k hp - NOTE: only need to keep raid above 10k hp - so don't overheal. During feud, we stack up and use aoe healing ie. efflorescence, wg, and rejuv spam plus some raid cooldowns. Use wg and spot healing with nourish or regrowth after massacre - shouldn't have a problem getting everyone over 10k hp.

2 Priests (1 disc, 1 holy) and 1 Druid: Set up is almost identical. Disc priest on tanks again and druid/holy priest with HoTs on tank not taking the double attacks to keep him above 10k hp. Druid uses healing touch to keep raid members above 10k hp, same for priest just with different spells.

Couple of other notes -
1. WTB the day when we can use nourish rather than healing touch. Even with around 8k spellpower raid buffed, my nourish only reliably heals for 9k. This forces me to use healing touch to get people from 1 to 10k and heals for much more and costs much more mana than is truly necessary.
2. My guess is we're doing something different with our tanks than what you've described.
3. I wonder if everyone has realized yet that the raid only needs to be at 10k hp at any time other than feud. And even during feud, they only need around 60k hp.

Anyway, hope this at least gives a new perspective.

Fîrewood